Communio Sanctorum is the product of the official German Catholic-Lutheran Dialogue and the first major Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical statement since the ground-breaking Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999. It focuses on the ecclesiastical issues that the Joint Declaration identified as the remaining obstacles to Lutheran-Catholic communion. The metaphor of the church as the communion of saints serves as a framework for addressing ecumenical issues such as sacraments, ministry, the role of the church in salvation, and the papacy.